After a few seasons of rain boots that fell apart within two weeks (I am not exaggerating, this happened to two pairs!), I decided to splurge on high quality rain boots for my son, Holden. These look very cool — black with spiders! — and they are warm and high-quality. In fact, they can handle […]

I just finished my four week experiment based the Stocked Kitchen cookbook and I rate it an enthusiastic one thumb up. I embraced the system fully in order to take advantage of the promise: maintain the master shopping list ingredients and be able to make any recipe in the book. I lived according to the […]

I downloaded the Hipstamatic iPhone app for $1.99 at the recommendation of my photo-snob friend, Jen. Loving it! I call this one “Hipsta-Milo” and it was taken by Holden. Photos are taken with various “photoshop effects” to simulate the results of the 1970’s era limited-edition camera, the Hipstamatic. You can select from film, flash, and […]

Now that I’ve been home for 2 weeks, I have finally recovered from my family vacation. Because we live on the West Coast and our families live Out East, every time we cross the Mississippi, it turns into a full-on Family Vacation, capital letters required. This year, we managed to sync up my plans to […]

Almost a year ago, Kathy from Invisibelt invited me to try out her special belt. She told me, “The Invisibelt is a flat undetectable belt intended to be worn under fitted tops. No more belt buckle bulge!!!” I was intrigued, but not completely sold. When the package arrived, I eyed it suspiciously before trying it […]

Last month, I was very lucky to go to the BABIES documentary San Francisco premiere. I laughed; I smirked; I squirmed. And I think all parents and parents-to-be would have similar emotional reactions (but probably to different parts). You try to sit still as a naked baby is surrounded by a herd of cattle, I […]

I was sent an advance copy of Nurtureshock: New Thinking About Children in the fall because once upon a time I wrote a tiny blog post about “praising the verb and not the noun” when talking to children. I let it sit on my shelf with the many other books I don’t have time for. […]

About two months ago, I accepted an offer from BlogHer to test drive a Lincoln MKT. The offer to test drive a car did not interest me at first, as I only drive a few miles each day, but when my husband pointed out that we might be able to time the car borrowing with […]

Getting to 50/50 is very well-researched and chock full of data. In fact, if you were committed to the SAHM-life before reading it, beware, this book might have you throwing out your diaper bag for a laptop bag. I originally posed the question, “are you already at 50/50?” a few weeks ago. Here’s my nitty […]

Let me start out by saying in no uncertain terms that I love the Toy Story movies!! Just so we’re clear. I enjoyed them in the theater back in the day. And I recently screened a DVD at home for my two- and four-year old boys with great success for family movie night. My big […]

I’m not so much a martini mom, but the subtitle of this book should give you a pretty good idea why I thought I’d like it: “100 ways to find 10 blissful minutes for yourself” — that’s pretty fantastic! And pretty close to our own philosophy of helping rookie moms survive the first year(s) of […]

When I saw one of the youtube ads for this indestructible Olympus camera a few months ago I thought, “yeah right” and by that I mean “no flipping way.” Maybe Olympus could get adorable preschool-like actors to put the camera through its paces on a gentle rubberized-mat surface, but could it really stand up to […]